The present invention relates to games and other sweepstakes or contests for delivering special promotions, and more specifically to a promotion apparatus and method.
In order to entice customers to shop at their stores, retailers have often implemented promotions of various types. The most common type is the standard reduction in price of a desirable item. In order to keep the interest and loyalty of their customers, retailers have created more sophisticated promotions such as sweepstakes and games as a means to deliver a reward or prize to a customer. Typically, because fewer customers would actually win, the prizes would be bigger than the standard value of a price reduction and more excitement would be created.
Often, the implementation of these games was mechanical and not integrated with the point-of-sale (POS) application or terminal. Usually, if customers performed a qualifying act, such as buying a predetermined item, they would receive a paper game token. This token would indicate one of many possible results, such as an instant win/lose result, a discount on the next purchase of an item, or a sweepstakes form to be filled out by the customers and entered into a drawing. Alternatively, a game token would qualify the customer to a prize when a collection of corresponding results was completed and retained by the customer. Usually this would take the form of game tokens bearing a letter or word. A winning collection of tokens is achieved when two or more of the tokens form a target word or phrase. Because multiple visits were required to gain a winning collection, such a game would establish a form of continuity or loyalty to the retailer sponsoring the game.
There have been some attempts to implement these games in an electronic manner, often tied to frequent shopper programs, but the resulting games have been very simple. They tend to either take the form of an “instant win” where the customer immediately wins or loses or they take the form of a sweepstakes entry where an entry is made on behalf of the customer and the winner is randomly determined at a later date. In another example, multiple electronic game tokens have been generated and compared to form a simple “slot machine” type game. In this case, however, the reward was determined and given in a single visit.
Continuity or points programs in which a customer receives a reward after a predetermined number of qualifying acts, such as buying something or just visiting the store, are also common. The qualifying acts are often recorded mechanically on store-provided game cards that customers carry or they may be converted to simple point totals that are stored electronically, often on-line in a central customer database. Sometimes these programs may have multiple reward levels where the reward value increases as the customer reaches the multiple point accumulation thresholds. For example, if a customer spends $300 in the month of November then the customer may receive a free turkey at Thanksgiving. However, if the customer spends $500, the customer may be eligible to receive a free turkey plus all of the trimmings.
Despite their initial appeal, known game methods suffer from being too simple to hold a customer's interest long enough to be effective. Continuity or points programs suffer from many problems. Because customers can easily figure out what they have to do to earn a reward, they may view the reward as an “entitlement” rather than as a “bonus” given to them by the retailer. Over time, this may greatly diminish the effectiveness of the promotion. This type of promotion is also not effective with customers who know that they are unlikely to be able to attain the reward requirement thresholds. Since they are too simple to be “fun”, they do not hold the attention of customers.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a promotion apparatus and method which enable a customer to play a game that is complex enough to hold their interest, but which is simple enough to play.